The Snowman (17 page)

“Fifteen grand.”

“That's a lot of money.”

“It's a lot of cocaine too.”

“And you'd have to give some kind of discount for payment in cash.”

“You're not going to haggle over a stupid few hundred marks?”

“I was thinking of a couple of grams.”

“Okay, I don't mind splashing out – I'll leave you the pillbox. There's at least six grams in there.”

James nodded, and rose rather stiffly from his armchair. “Then I'll go and phone the interested parties.”

“I don't have much time, mister,” Blum warned him.

“I thought time was of the essence in your profession. The beer's in the kitchen.”

Blum got himself another. He drank it slowly, watching the sun sink behind the fir trees, as Cora and Margot disappeared into the farmhouse.
I like you, Blum
. What did she mean by that? She might as well have said: I like my steak well done. He knew that was not so, but he couldn't keep back the thought. Such vague language blurred everything. You knew where you were with whores and tourists. A pair of shoes for Fatima of the Kasbah, a torrid holiday romance for the hairdresser from Hameln. I like you, that sounded definite enough, but all it meant was: now we're quits. But why did Cora want to be quits with him?

When he had drunk his beer James came back and said everything was going smoothly. “You'll get your money this evening.”

Blum looked at his watch. It was twenty past five. “What do you mean by this evening?”

“Patience, Blum, patience. A couple of hours – maybe eleven or twelve o'clock. There's all you need here – Margot can cook a meal, there's plenty to drink in the house, you can read or go for a walk or watch TV, and if you want to go to bed there are plenty of rooms over in the farmhouse. The people who live there are understanding folk, you won't be in their way.”

“The people who live there?”

“I let a few people who've had certain difficulties in town stay there.”

“That's very nice of you, James, but I don't know if I can hang around that long. We really wanted to leave for Amsterdam this evening.”

“You're buying in Amsterdam?”

“Edam cheese, yes.”

They stared at each other. James forced himself to make a casual gesture. “Have a drink, Blum. Scotch?”

He drank J&B. Where else had he drunk J&B recently? With Hermes. Hermes and James. There must be a link. J&H. The ex-photographer and the ex-dealer. Frogs and daughters. Blum helped himself to another Scotch, but added plenty of soda. He wandered around the big room, looked at the pictures, and in a corner, under two crossed Turkish sabres, found a slate slab on which someone had written in chalk: “At ten man becomes an animal, at twenty a madman, at thirty a failure, at forty a swindler and at fifty a criminal.”

“Who wrote that?” he asked James, who was putting a book back on the shelves.

“A Japanese poet. I found it in Henry Miller. How old are you, Blum?”

“Thirty-nine,” said Blum.

“There, you see? And I'm forty-nine”

It was cold outside. The last of the daylight was fading behind the woods. Mist over the meadows, crows on the branches of the fruit trees. Blum swore as his ankleboots sank into the muddy ground. Bloody shit, bloody filth, bloody crazy. Five pounds of coke and still no land in sight.

A rotting kitchen garden lay in front of the farmhouse. Weeds rambled over rusty tin cans. Scraps of a woman's blouse hung on a dead tomato plant leaning sideways. From the house – its roof was covered with moss – he heard loud metallic clanging, groaning, some kind of singsong. Carefully, Blum made his way up the slippery steps and opened the door.

The clanging and singing came from a room on his right. The door to the room was not locked, and Blum slowly opened it. The noise drowned the squeal of the rusty hinges. They were squatting on a pile of old mattresses in a big, smoky, unheated room, muffled up in sweaters, jackets, blankets and curtains, about a dozen men and women all with the same long hair and pale faces, drumming on baking tins, saucepans, fuel canisters and tar barrels, bawling out their song to the sound. It was like the party in Munich all over again:

“Awawawa-ah!”

“Ululululu-uh!”

“Awawawawa-ah!”

“Ulululululu-uh!”

Candles and incense sticks were burning here too, and one man was stripping in front of the company; there was no snake coiled around his torso, but a whiplash that he was using to strike himself in time with the jungle sounds. His shadow danced over the wall, where the plaster was flaking away. Blum closed the door again, turned and opened the door opposite. This was the kitchen. In contrast to the exterior of the house it was comfortable, clean and warm. There was even a fridge, and a kitten purring in front of a saucer of milk. Two young men in dark caftans were sitting on a window-seat in the corner in front of the remains of a meal. One was reading out figures from a sheet of paper while the other fed them into a pocket calculator.

“Comes to 456,787.92,” he said.

“Deutschmarks or dollars?” asked Blum.

They gave him no more than a fleeting glance. “Meetings only on Sundays,” said the man with the calculator, and went on with his sums. Blum thanked him for the information and closed the door. Suddenly he realized that his nerves were stretched to breaking point. Cold sweat stood out on his forehead. His hand trembled as it held his lighter to a cigarette. The next door was ajar too, and before Blum opened it he heard Cora's voice. His hand slowly withdrew.

“I haven't told him,” said Cora.

“I wouldn't either if I were you.” That was Margot.

“But that wouldn't be fair. I mean, I owe him something.”

“Suppose you do tell him. You can't know how he'll react.”

“Oh, he's too old to rant and rave or anything.”

“But if you simply go on this way . . .”

That was enough for Blum. He didn't want to know any more. Perhaps he really was too old to rant and
rave, but he was certainly not too old to realize what was going on. He'd been right; he ought to have relied on his instinct from the first. They'd planted her on him. Of course they knew he liked her type. Your tastes were no secret by the time you were forty. And now she was wondering whether to come clean. The classic case – she'd fallen for him. It might sound improbable, but the most improbable answer was always the right one. The more improbable the more likely to be right. And where there was money involved it was always safe to assume that everyone was out to cheat you. He quietly left the house and went back to the bungalow. Deception and betrayal, betrayal and deception, brothers down the ages. James was sitting in his armchair, putting a film into a camera. The Dalmatian beside him growled.

“It's okay, Orlando. This is Herr Blum, our new cocaine dealer. Kind of looks as if he doesn't like you, Blum.”

“Too bad for him. Who was your old dealer, then? Hermes?”

James frowned. So I was right, thought Blum. He wondered if he'd reach the VW if James set the dog on him. He had no experience of fighting off savage dogs with a flick-knife. But the dog didn't look savage. He too was only a double, like his master. Blum supposed he'd just have to write off the six grams in the pillbox.

“Ah, you mean Hermes in Munich,” said James. “But he retired ages ago. Isn't he breeding horses now?”

“Daughters,” said Blum.

“That's right, he never could keep his hands off the girls. How odd that you know him too.”

“We're colleagues, after all,” said Blum. “Not that a little thing like that counts in this line of trade.”

James passed his hand over his beret and looked hard at Blum.

“What do you mean? Sit down, Blum. You make me quite nervous standing there like that.”

“You know what I mean. You can tell Hermes from me, thanks but no thanks. If he wants the stuff he'll have to see about it for himself.”

He ran across the garden, the knife in his right hand, and flung open the door of the VW with his left. Then he saw that Cora had taken the key out. It had still been in the ignition when she parked. He didn't even think of trying the Mercedes. He simply ran on through the slush and mud. It was dark now. Behind him he heard James calling and the dog barking, but no one was following him. He had taken them by surprise. It was always an advantage to be a little quicker off the mark than other people. Gasping, he reached the road, ran down the slope and disappeared into the woods.

The breakfast room was also available to guests as a TV room in the evenings. Blum had it to himself. He chose the most comfortable chair and placed another in front of it so that he could put his feet up, and stood yet another chair beside it for his beer, his hamburger and the ashtray. The last two hours were among the worst Blum could remember, and he had known some really bad ones. By comparison, waiting around at Malta airport had been the purest South Seas holiday. First the woods, the darkness and the animals, then two miles along the road when no one would stop to give him a lift, then three-quarters of an hour in the bar attached to the gym in the nearest village waiting for a taxi that had to come out from the local town. You could have four lines of coke inside you in a big city, even on the tram, even in the local government offices, even at a meeting of members of the police sports club – fine, no problem. But a head full of snow in the bar next to the gym of some dump in the Taunus, on a Friday evening before the bowling begins – no thanks. Or not, anyway, after an hour in the woods and on the road, wearing Spanish ankleboots meant for an evening stroll down the avenidas, with your trousers stiff with mud up to the calves, fir needles and birdshit on your jacket, and an icy chill in your limbs that was outdone only by the hatred he felt for Cora. And the taxi ride had been no picnic either, what with the driver's endless chatter, the fear that the man would
simply drop him off at the nearest police station – “Got to be a sex murderer for sure, sergeant, comes straight out of the woods, and he's not from hereabouts” – and the certainty that by now Cora had been in his room long ago, and the key to the left-luggage locker was gone for ever.

He bit a piece off his hamburger, drank some beer and switched on the TV. What did the world have to offer? At least the key had still been in place under the bedside table, untouched, where he had moved it, the hair he had left as a precaution still on the sticky tape. The game went on.

He had taken another bite when he suddenly saw Mr Haq on the screen. No doubt about it – there he stood, surrounded by his fellow countrymen and uniformed police, on an airport concourse, smiling straight at the camera. He was wearing his green suit and black tie. The colours showed up well. Blum found the volume control.

“. . . the first group of illegal immigrants to be deported to their home countries by the state of Hesse. The Interior Ministry has established that they came to the Federal Republic for purely economic reasons. Most are from Pakistan and travelled by way of East Berlin. The influx of asylum seekers continues. We will now hear what the Frankfurt City Council has to say. Over to our reporter on the crisis team in the Römer building . . .”

Mr Haq raised his hand, waved, and then made Winston Churchill's famous V for Victory sign. He's telling me that we'll win through, thought Blum. Clever fellow. A professional making his mark. Blum switched over to another channel. So Mr Haq had been deported. Tomorrow he could be eating with his wife again. Perhaps Jeddah would have been better
after all. Blum threw the rest of his hamburger into the wastepaper basket. All that good curry. Billiards at the Punjab Club. Daughters. How far would DM 500 go in Lahore? Not far enough for a comfortable retirement, for sure. But perhaps Mr Haq had made most profit after all. At least he was home again.

“I think there's something on Two,” said a man whose presence Blum hadn't even noticed. Had he been sitting here all the time? No, impossible. He was just opening a beer. A tall, sturdy fellow in a badly fitting blue suit worn with a red jersey shirt. Kindly face. Blum switched over to Channel Two. The man sat behind and to one side of him. The programme he wanted was called
File XY – Case Still Open
. The presenter was just greeting studio guests in Vienna, Zurich and Munich. As Blum didn't know the series it took him a moment to realize that the studio guests were CID officers, particularly as the detective-superintendent in Munich was a smart young woman. So now he was going to get a survey of the activities of the German-speaking criminal fraternity. Not that East Germany was included, very likely there
was
no German-speaking criminal fraternity there. And Mr Haq was in his plane flying east. Maybe they'd stop over in Bahrain and he'd succeed in bribing a Bahraini official and going underground. It wasn't all that far from Bahrain to Jeddah. Hm. That's life: hard, but sometimes fair. At least mosquitoes don't live as long.

The man behind Blum cleared his throat, but when Blum turned round he simply gave a foolish grin and raised his beer bottle. Blum nodded, drank too, and turned back to the film. Or rather it was not a film but real life, or anyway an imitation of real life, so a film after all. A search was going on in the Cologne area for the murderer of a police officer. A large-scale manhunt.